Gas Fluxes and Steady State Saturation Anomalies at Very High Wind Speeds

Abstract

Gas exchange is a key part of the biogeochemical cycle of many climatically important gases, such as CO 2 , N 2 O, and DMS, as well as of O 2 which is increasingly being used to quantify rates of biological production and CO 2 uptake through the biological pump (e.g.,

A Sea State Dependent Gas Transfer Velocity for CO2 Unifying Theory, Model, and Field Data

“…This is a typical phenomena in Southern Ocean, especially in winter. We note that tropical cyclone wind speed conditions (U 10 > 35 m/s) gas transfer velocities have not been measured in the field, while some laboratory experiments have been reported (Krall et al, 2019;Stanley et al, 2022).…”

“…Effects of surfactants on gas exchange have been discussed (Bell et al, 2017), but still need to be incorporated within this modeling framework. Finally, the dependencies on gas solubility needs to be further investigated, in particular to incorporate effects of asymmetric gas exchange (Leighton et al, 2018;Liang et al, 2020;Stanley et al, 2009Stanley et al, , 2022.…”

“…The traditional parameterizations used in ocean and climate models for the gas transfer velocity are solely dependent on wind-speed and gas diffusivity, see Wanninkhof (2014); Ho et al (2006Ho et al ( , 2011. However bubbles entrained by wave breaking modify air-sea gas flux by (a) enhancing the gas exchange by increasing the available surface area for gas exchange (Deike, 2022;Deike & Melville, 2018;Keeling, 1993;Woolf, 1997;Woolf & Thorpe, 1991), and (b) bubbles can fully dissolve in water due to hydrostatic pressure and bring the water to supersaturation, critical for low solubility gases (Keeling, 1993;Liang et al, 2017Liang et al, , 2020Stanley et al, 2009Stanley et al, , 2022Woolf & Thorpe, 1991). A robust parameterization for bubble mediated gas transfer velocity for variable gases in climate models requires accounting for the role of solubility.…”